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What are the maximum volume sizes and maximum file sizes for the various Windows file systems?
John Savill
November 11, 2002
1 Min Read
A. Windows 2000 and later support FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems. (The next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will support a new file system known as WinFS). The table below lists the maximum volume sizes and maximum file sizes for FAT, FAT32, and NTFS.
FAT
Operating systems | All versions of Windows and DOS | Windows .NET Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows 95 OEM Service Release (OSR) 2 | Windows .NET Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 support NTFS 4 and 5 (previous version of Windows NT support NTFS 4 only) |
Maximum volume size | 4GB | 2TB (although Windows XP lets you format only up to 32GB but can read larger volumes) | You can use 64KB clusters to achieve a 256TB volume (any volumes larger than 2TB must be dynamic, not basic) |
Minimum volume size | Floppy disk | 512MB | 10MB (although some tools let you format a floppy drive as NTFS, see Sysinternals.com) |
Maximum file size | 4GB | 4GB | Size of volume |
Maximum files per volume | 512 files or folders per folder * | 65,534 files or folders per folder * | 4,294,967,295 |
* If you use long filenames, you will reduce the number of files per folder.
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